The Education of Ivy Blake (2 page)

At home,
Ivy and Prairie climbed the narrow stairs to their room. Prairie scrambled into the top bunk. “Did you have a good birthday?”

“It was perfect.” Pup padded in around the half-open door. Ivy fluttered her fingers at him and he leaped up beside her. She rubbed his ears and he arched his neck and purred. “Thank you for everything. I love the colored pencils.”

“You're welcome.” Prairie flopped onto her stomach and her arm dangled over the edge of the bunk. “Finally you're eleven too.” The arm disappeared. “Now maybe Mom will let us ride our bikes to town by ourselves. Let's ask tomorrow.” With each sentence, Prairie's voice grew sleepier, and then she was snoring—snoring lightly, but still snoring, no matter how much she refused to believe it.

Ivy slid the sketchbook Grammy had given her out of its gift bag. She smoothed her hand over its hard black cover and traced a finger down the big wire spiral. She opened it to the first page, paused for a moment, then started to write.

She put down everything she wanted to remember about the day: the orange cake with chocolate frosting, the presents, the boy in the Nestlé's Quik T-shirt, the determined look of Grammy's blue plaid sneakers making their way up the aisle. Then, for about the thousandth time since she'd started keeping a journal, Ivy wrote about how she wanted to be a movie director someday.

It was a crazy dream, but every time she saw a movie, she was filled with the desire. Writing about it used an entire page, and drawing it out with the colored pencils Prairie had given her used another. She drew herself wearing a black beret and carrying a megaphone, sitting in a director's chair with her name on the back of it. It was silly but no one would ever see it, so it was okay.

Ivy wrote and wrote, the notebook on her knees.

• • •

She clicked off her light at nine o'clock, the bedtime Mom Evers set for them. At ten she was still awake. Sometimes her thoughts started churning like clothes in a washer and she couldn't stop them. Mom Evers kept saying the baby she was expecting had turned her into the world's lightest sleeper, but Ivy knew she herself was the world's lightest sleeper, really.

Finally she got out of bed and tiptoed into the hall. She peeked into Grammy's tiny bedroom. Empty. She crept to the middle step of the stairs and sat with her arms wrapped around her knees.

“I did enjoy that movie,” Grammy said from the kitchen.

“That was something, that train going right through the station wall,” Dad Evers said. “Imagine being there
that
day.” A fork clinked on a plate. He was having another piece of cake, probably. “You think she had a good birthday?”

“I really hoped her mother would at least call,” Mom Evers said. “That woman—”

Ivy tensed, but no one finished the sentence. Pup padded up beside her and she lifted him onto her lap.

Their conversation meandered into the gas mileage the station wagon might get and what time they needed to be at the other farmers' market they went to every week, the one in Woodstock on Wednesday. Ivy listened, thinking about the changes Mom and Dad Evers were making. The new used car, big enough to fit everyone. An addition they were tacking onto the side of the house to be the baby's room. The painted chairs as another thing to sell at the markets along with the flowers and vegetables and quilts and birdhouses, though so far there'd been more money going out on those than coming in. Dad Evers had even taken a part-time job as a mechanic, which bothered Ivy a lot.

She kept thinking if it wasn't for her—an extra person to feed and clothe—he wouldn't have had to. He'd only taken the job after many late-night talks at the kitchen table, talks they didn't know she was listening to. But it had been her habit ever since she moved in to sit at the top of the stairs if she couldn't sleep and listen to them. Their voices were always low and easy and usually it made Ivy feel like a horse at a trough of cool, clean water, drinking up their conversations.

But now, all the changes made her worry. What would happen to her when the baby came and everything was different?

A few nights
later, rain drummed on the roof of the farmhouse. Thunder echoed off the mountainside and every now and then a bolt of lightning flashed. Inside, everyone was sleeping. Even Pup was curled behind Ivy's knees instead of stalking the mice that lived in the cellar.

Pup purred, Prairie snored, and Ivy dreamed. She tensed and made a sound of protest. She tried to run and couldn't make her legs move. Something bad was happening, something terrible. She had to stop it—

She woke up thrashing. Her heart pounded, her nightgown was damp with sweat.

“'S just a dream,” Prairie mumbled. “'S okay.”

Ivy moaned softly “It seemed so real. Like it was happening all over again.”

“Take deep breaths.”

Ivy did.

“Think of something nice,” Prairie murmured.

Ivy's mind felt blank and frightened.

“Want me to come down there?”

“No,” Ivy whispered. “I'm okay.”

“'Kay. Night, then.”

Ivy peered at her clock, the little white travel alarm Aunt Connie had given her so long ago. Both hands were aimed at the twelve. She pulled her quilt closer and gazed into the green-lit darkness.

• • •

She was slowly walking through Aunt Connie's living room in her mind, trying to calm herself by looking at everything—brown velveteen sofa, dusty aloe plant, barrel of umbrellas by the door, dragonfly painting over the TV, dragonfly statuettes on the end table, the three metal dragonflies that flew over the archway into the kitchen—when a car that needed a new muffler roared up the dirt road. It squealed into the driveway and brakes screeched. Ivy's eyes flew open. A few seconds later someone was pounding at the kitchen door.

Ivy threw her quilt back and Pup thumped to the floor and stalked away with his tail held straight and stiff. Prairie mumbled something and shoved herself upright. Downstairs there was the low sound of Mom and Dad Evers' voices in counterpoint to the louder, faster sound of Ivy's mother's.

By the time Ivy got to the kitchen, Mom Evers was running water in the teakettle, Dad Evers was stirring the embers of the fire, and Ivy's mom was sitting in one of his painted chairs. She wore summer sandals even though it was cold and raining, and her favorite T-shirt (it was clingy and glittery and said
Hot S--t
on it, just like that, with the two dashes in the middle) without a sweatshirt or jacket, plus a pair of jeans Ivy happened to know she hated because she thought they made her look fat, which they didn't. Nothing could; her mom was as skinny as a porch railing. Her hair was damp and her eyes were red and she looked like she'd been awake for about a year straight. “Hey, Ives,” she said.

Grammy came in and jerked the belt of her robe tight. “What in tarnation is going on? People are sleeping, for crying out loud, or trying to.”

Dad Evers squatted back on his heels. “Tracy's, ah—she's had something of an emergency, Ma.”

Grammy yanked her belt even tighter. “There aren't many emergencies can't wait until morning when you come right down to it. I don't see any blood, or limbs missing.”

Mom Evers cleared her throat. “I thought I'd make tea. If you wouldn't mind reaching the cups down for me—”

Grammy opened her mouth and clamped it shut again. She marched across the kitchen and yanked mugs from the cupboard. Prairie stepped forward and grabbed Ivy's hand as Ivy's mom swiped her cheeks with her palms. It made her look like a little kid who'd fallen and scraped her knees, and something inside Ivy stopped short. Then her mom erased the sadness from her face—it was like an Etch A Sketch being shaken clean—and started talking.

The gist of it was, she was leaving George. Leaving George, leaving Poughkeepsie, leaving her job at the night desk of the hotel, quitting her life across the river cold turkey. She'd thrown her wedding ring and house keys smack at George's heart, which he didn't have anyway, and pulled away. “I'm all done there. I wouldn't go back if he begged me.”

Grammy's spoon clinked in her teacup.

“Gosh,” Ivy finally said. “I'm sorry.”

Her mom gave a hard bark of laughter. “Don't be sorry for
me.
He's the loser in this deal.”

Ivy blinked. “Right. He is. I know that.”

“So what do you think?” Her mom trained her eyes on Ivy. Ivy felt like she was standing alone in a tunnel with her. “You want to keep me company?”

“Hang on just a minute—” Grammy began, but Ivy interrupted.

“What do you mean?”

“I figured I'd find a place to rent, get a new job, up in Kingston, maybe. Lindsey mentioned the store at the gas station where she works is hiring.”

Lindsey was a friend of Ivy's mom. Ivy didn't like her much, but her mom did, off and on. “You want me to come for a visit, you mean?”

“No, to live.”

“You don't wake a child in the middle of the night and talk about moving to another town right near the end of a school year—” Grammy began, but Ivy pulled her hand free from Prairie's and took a step toward her mother and Grammy broke off.

The quiet night sounds of the house—the ticking clock, the humming refrigerator—became quieter yet. The Everses faded into the background until it was only Ivy and her mother, staring at each other.

Ivy thought of that night when she was five. The yelling, the sound of things crashing. Waking up, coming out of her room. Seeing her dad throw something—a bottle? a plate? Ivy never knew exactly what—at her mom.

She had watched her mother's hand pick up a gun from the table. She'd seen her finger pull the trigger, and she'd stared in horror as her dad fell.

It seemed to happen in slow-motion, but of course it really didn't. It happened fast.

Ivy could—just barely—remember that her mom had been different before that night. A little different, anyway. She had a memory of sitting on her mother's lap, curled into her like a snail into its shell. She remembered listening to her mom's heartbeat:
thrum-bum, thrum-bum.
She remembered rocking, and a song being hummed. Every now and then she'd think she heard it on the oldies station Mom and Dad Evers left the car radio set to, but as soon as she noticed, the song would be over.

Ivy thought of the years they'd lived with Aunt Connie in New Paltz, after her father was gone and the judge had ruled what her mom did was self-defense.
Justifiable homicide
was the official term for it. Aunt Connie had sat Ivy down on the couch, her arm around her the whole time, and tried to explain it to her.

Because of Aunt Connie, those years had been good, as good as they could be anyway, after what had happened. But then Aunt Connie got cancer and died too, and Ivy's world had gone pale and dark, until she met Prairie in school.

She thought of how they had become best friends, of Mom and Dad Evers inviting her to live with them when her mom decided to move back to Poughkeepsie with George, as if the past, and Ivy herself, had never happened.

She thought of all this in that time-suspended moment in the kitchen where she'd been so content since last fall, and then she said, “Yeah, Mom. I'd like that.”

• • •

Saturday morning Ivy's dresser drawers hung open and her suitcase yawned on her bed. She nestled her clock in among her socks so it wouldn't get broken. Prairie stood nearby, scowling.

“I don't want you to move back with your mom. Couldn't you have argued with her?”

The middle drawer held Ivy's jumpers and long johns shirts and leggings. She remembered the day she'd found them at a thrift shop with Prairie, right before school started. Mom Evers had given them each twenty dollars to shop with and then sat outside the changing room while they modeled their choices. She'd nod thoughtfully with her eyes narrowed or else shake her head in pretend horror, making it seem like they were in some fancy department store instead of the resale room at the back of the community center. Afterward they'd gone out for tea and cookies and sat with their shopping bags piled around their ankles, and the whole day had been like something you read about in a book. Ivy's own mom had never done anything like that. She probably never would.

Prairie gave the bureau top a small
whap
with her palm. “Grammy definitely wanted to argue with her. Mom and Dad did too, I know they did.”

But Ivy didn't want the Everses having to argue for her, especially not Mom Evers. She had enough to do, with all the work of the farm and the baby coming. Ivy lifted the clothes out of the drawer, taking special care with a dress she'd found that day but had never worn because it seemed too old for her. Mom Evers had said it was okay, though.
It's beautiful,
she'd said, fingering the fluttery, dark blue fabric.
It suits you. Quiet and elegant. And you've grown so tall these last few months, I'll bet it fits you for a long time.

“You wouldn't have to go if you did. I mean—all the way to Kingston. Starting a new school.” Prairie yanked at one of the embroidery-floss ties in Ivy's quilt. Worked it loose and started in on another.

Ivy wanted to pull Prairie's hand away—she loved her quilt, which Mom Evers had made for her, and tried to keep it perfect—but she didn't. “It'll be okay,” she said. “It will. It'll be different this time.”